TEACHING TO UNLEARN COMMUNITY IN ORDER TO MAKE A CLAIM TO COMMUNITY

In this essay Duck‐Joo Kwak explores a moral perfectionist approach to citizenship education, which is distinct from liberal and communitarian models. One of educational challenges to this approach is how to cultivate our students' sense of membership, which is shaped by a thick sense of the good life, while being not merely compatible with but open to the pluralist perspective. Kwak maintains that what is required for this form of membership to society or community is our future citizens' ability to engage in highly self‐reflexive philosophical reflection on the human condition; such reflection gives them the skills necessary to live up to the tension between different selves of diverse origins or within a divided self. Examining Stanley Cavell's view of political education as an exemplar of the moral perfectionist approach to citizenship education, Kwak shows how the practice of his ordinary language philosophy can be a good way to cultivate this ability by teaching us how to “speak for others” by way of “speaking for oneself.”     

Class Analysis and the Emancipatory Potential of Education

Recently, a range of educational theorists have explored and extended upon popular currents in political theory through articulating “open” and “unknowing” pedagogies. Such contributions represent a radical turn away from the presumed “universals” found in proclamations of justice and emancipation and, ultimately, the centering of class analysis. At the same time, inspired by and building upon Bourdieuian theory, another cluster of educational research has developed a nuanced understanding of the social, cultural, and educational mechanisms involved in class reproduction. In this essay, Jessica Gerrard offers a critical — though sympathetic — response to these dual trends. Bringing together theories of reproduction in conversation with theories of pedagogical possibility, Gerrard argues for a renewed understanding of working‐class relations to education that incorporates an understanding of working‐class action and struggle.     

Toward a Theory of Liking

In the current essay, Kevin Burke and Adam Greteman challenge this thing called love by looking at how we might instead “like” in education. Within education, multiculturalism can be viewed as a way of loving, or learning to love, diversity and, as such, learning to love the self; this tendency is notably apparent in the recent rise of concern expressed about student self‐esteem. According to the authors, however, critical research on multiculturalism demonstrates how, in loving diversity, multicultural discourses limn the possibilities for subjects to come into being and be liked for their differences. Drawing on James Alison's On Being Liked, Burke and Greteman reframe the problem of relating in education instead through the language of liking. How does the shift from loving to liking — either our students, our teachers, or ourselves — create different social dynamics and ethical paradigms? In engaging this question, Burke and Greteman offer an alternative model of liking that is based on the practice of cruising.     

Wanting to be ‘known’: Redefining self‐awareness through an understanding of self‐narration processes in educational transitions

The aim of this article is to initiate discussion about the pursuit of self‐awareness—a concept embedded in recent policy—as an educational goal. The authors argue that complex theoretical questions need to be addressed if improvements in policy and practice relating to personal, social and emotional education are to ensue. Such questions relate to possible interpretations of ‘self‐awareness’, a term that may be linked to outdated theories, implying a ‘self’ to be discovered and the possibility that people can sustain a ‘sense of self’ across time and place. From this perspective, self‐awareness may seem overly individualistic, obscuring more pro‐social goals (e.g. empathy, compassion, citizenship). Drawing on sociological and social psychological literature, as well as data from an empirical study of identity construction, it is hoped to contribute to the provision of firm foundations for personal, social and emotional education through a stronger theoretical exposition of ‘self‐awareness’. The authors' reconceptualised version highlights the importance of an expanded and flexible story of self, which they view as an invaluable tool for learning, fostering an openness to change.     

Creating the plural self: athletic teams’ use of members’ bodies

Galatzer‐Levy and Cohler's (1993) definition of “ self” allows for the possibility of a “ plural self,” that is, moments when an individual locates the center of initiative for action, feeling, and awareness among a group of people. Using observations and interviews, this investigation explores the ways four basketball teams used players’ bodies to create such a plural self, transforming autonomous individuals into interconnected, deindividualized members. One set of somatic practices made the team perceptible as a whole: huddles, team movements, hand slapping, and certain passing drills. A complementary set of practices encouraged the players to incorporate the team into their bodies. Examples presented of such incorporation are communal relaxation of bodily tension, the rhythms of shared ritual music, and a “sixth sense” of the location of teammates. Acute pain interferes with the emergence of this plural self in both injured and healthy players. The possibility is raised that for many athletes this temporarily realized plural self continues as a possible self and invites the development of certain virtues and failings.     

Dewey and Possibility: Challenging Neoliberalism in Education

In recent decades, critiques of neoliberalism have been widespread within the scholarly literature on education. Despite the lack of a clear definition of what neoliberalism in education is and entails, researchers from different fields and perspectives have widely criticized the neoliberal educational mindset for its narrowness, lack of democratic engagement, and objectification of educational practices. In this essay, through an analysis of a particular aspect of Dewey's oeuvre — namely, Dewey's commitment to the “unattained” and “wonderful possibilities” of experience and education — I argue that educational neoliberalism should be refuted above all on the basis of its lack of intelligence and professional weakness. With regard to this, I contend that educational neoliberalism, despite its relative sophistication, is but another form authoritarian teaching. Dewey, in contrast, challenged the view of education as a means for achieving predetermined goals, and instead conceived of education as an end in itself, something imbued with the unpredictable space of pure possibility.     

论教学相长范畴的变迁及其当代价值

教学相长作为《学记》中的教育范畴,对学与教之间相互关系的阐释最为经典,是“为己之学”在教育经典文本中的生动再现。以郑玄—孔颖达为代表的注疏之学和以荆公新学—陈澔为代表的义理之学,体现了以学为核心的教育话语体系下,教学相长范畴研究的儒学话语变迁。以《学记笺证》《学记研究》《〈礼记〉新读》为代表的学术专著,呈现了以教为核心的话语体系下,教学相长范畴研究的学科术语变迁。教育学类教材和论文主要从教学原则和教师成长规律两个方面来展开教学相长范畴研究。教学相长范畴中“为己之学”的为学旨趣、“弟子不必不如师”的师道观念和“好学”的师德修养,正是教学过程中形成良好师生关系的内在保障。教学相长范畴的当代价值就在于此。     

New Trends in Swedish Educational Research

What new tendencies can be made out in Swedish educational research in the last three decades? Briefly, the following developments are described: In the 1970s, a long‐prevailing emphasis on quantitative research was challenged by a number of different qualitative methods. Traditional sociology of education, meanwhile, was challenged by the new sociology of education. During the 1980s, the dominant trend was a “didacticisation” of educational research, and here two main strands can be discerned, based in phenomenography and curriculum theory. Didactics very soon made its presence felt in educational policy, and in a major evaluation of Swedish educational research the two largely didactics‐based traditions of “teaching and learning” and “curriculum theory” were identified as internationally the most significant. In the 1990s, educational research took a “linguistic turn”—involving a wide‐ranging shift in emphasis towards language and communication—with the result that new perspectives emerged. In addition, the philosophy of education experienced a powerful renaissance, partly as a reflection of the new focus on language and communication, but also in other respects, leading to a reawakening of interest in both classical and modern philosophy (of education).     

Teacher Unions, (Neo)Liberalism and the State: The Perth County Conspiracy of 1885

In 1885, following a period of severe economic depression and social unrest in colonial Canada, state teachers in rural Perth County, Ontario met and formed the nucleus of what could clearly be described as a teachers' union. The idea spread quickly, and within six months the founding convention of a province‐wide union was held in Toronto. Understandably, state officials were not pleased, and worked assiduously over the ensuing months to counter this movement. Building on the already‐pervasive official discourse of individualized “professional responsibility”, these officials began hinting about the possibility of teachers being “blessed” with a state‐sanctioned “College of Preceptors” – a strategy that had previously been employed in England for a similar purpose. This article attempts to describe these events (and their sad outcomes), within the context of a review of the origins of state schooling systems, recent theory related to governmentality and individual (self‐)regulation, and recent schooling “reforms” being undertaken concomitant with the (continuing) globalization of neo‐liberal regimes of governance.     

THE EDUCATIONAL MEANING OF COMMUNAL LAUGHTER: ON THE EXPERIENCE OF CORPOREAL DEMOCRACY

In this article Joris Vlieghe, Maarten Simons, and Jan Masschelein attempt to articulate a new way of dealing with the public character of education. Instead of discussing laughter as an instrument that one could use to facilitate established educational goals, the authors provide an extensive analysis of the phenomenon of laughter as a specific form of corporeal behavior. Their analysis demonstrates that when we laugh, we give an answer to a disorienting situation, but this answer is not the product of intentional agency. Instead, it consists in the uncontrollable spasmodic contraction of our diaphragm and other impersonal and automatic corporeal reactions. We are thus exposed to an ultimate loss of self‐control. The authors argue further that communal laughter—that is, when the lack of mastery over our own lives becomes a shared experience—results in what they call a “democracy of the flesh.” In this state, it is no longer possible to stick to well‐defined positions, nor is it tenable to defend any hierarchical ordering, including the strict hierarchy we typically find in the context of schooling and education. Common laughter makes equals out of us and grants the possibility of an unforeseen and unimaginable future. For precisely this reason, the authors conclude, communal laughter might be considered as an educational event itself.     

Academic resilience and its psychological and educational correlates: A construct validity approach

This study examines educational and psychological correlates of academic resilience using within‐network and between‐network validity approaches. Based on a sample of 402 Australian high‐school students, a newly developed unidimensional academic resilience construct found within‐network validity by way of sound item and factor properties. In terms of between‐network validity, correlation, path analysis, and cluster analysis showed that five factors predict academic resilience: self‐efficacy, control, planning, low anxiety, and persistence. Hence, a 5‐C model of academic resilience is proposed: confidence (self‐efficacy), coordination (planning), control, composure (low anxiety), and commitment (persistence). Path analysis also showed that academic resilience subsequently predicts three educational and psychological “outcomes”: enjoyment of school, class participation, and general self‐esteem. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 267–281, 2006.     

Foucault at School: Discipline,Education and Agency in Harry Potter

The formative power of children's literature is both great and suspicious. As a resource of socialization, the construction and experience of children's literature can be seen as modes of disciplinary coercion such as Michel Foucault has anatomized. Harry Potter, as a “craze” phenomenon, has attracted particular controversy due to its intense commercialization and dissemination, raising questions about its socializing roles. Here I argue that Harry Potter itself addresses, represents, and reflects on socializing disciplines as both psychological and socio-historical processes, with special focus on and implications for educational scenes and methods. Discipline is shown to be inevitable and necessary, but not only in the coercive ways of Foucault. It is no less important for constructing the self in positive senses. Hogwarts, as the central site of action, becomes a stage for a wide variety of educational models and disciplinary modes and goals. These range from Dolores Umbridge, whose classroom is coercively disciplinary in full Foucauldian sense; through Snape's abuses of power, Albus Dumbledore's modelling of educational and moral values, and Harry's own role as student-teacher exemplifying educational principles which Jerome Bruner and others have called a “community of learning.” This variety of educational experiences explores the possibilities through which discipline emerges not only as coercive, but also as formative in ways that are maturing, strengthening, and rewarding: a possibility with strong implications for questions of socialization and creativity in general. Harry Potter concludes with a reconstitution of self and society, in a way that endorses discipline even as it suspects its coercive abuses. This becomes not only a personal project but an explicitly social and political one, requiring both critique and investment in culture. Socialization then is shown to be a process of formation that is not merely coercive but creative.     

Lessons of love: Psychoanalysis and teacher-student love

What is the relation of love and pedagogy? Two recent phenomena have called into question whether love has any place within pedagogy at all: teacher‐student sexual scandal and the standardization movement. As love walks the thin line between inspiration and sex, and as standardization has assumed love to be synonymous with bias, it has become more important than ever to provide a clear account of love and its relation to teaching. For this account, I turn to Lacanian psychoanalysis and, in particular, to Lacan's contentious claim that “There is no such thing as a sexual relationship.” Through an explication of Lacan's position on love, I conclude that love not only has a place within pedagogy but is necessary for it.     

Betwixt and Between: Working Through the Aesthetic in Philosophy of Education: George F. Kneller Lecture,Conference of the American Educational Studies Association Savannah,Georgia, October 30, 2008

At a time when both philosophy of education and the arts are under threat within education, this article inquires into interdisciplinarity as one way of approaching the disciplines of philosophy of education and aesthetics. The article offers a retrospective autobiographical intellectual history and phenomenology of the author's own learning and scholarship within Higher Education in three main areas—philosophy of literature education, women's studies, and philosophy of music education, areas paralleling the three periods of her academic career. One sub-theme of this narrative about the balancing act of working in literature and music through philosophy of education is the author's ongoing resistance to professionalization or disciplinary academic control—of literature, philosophy, and music—while being a critical student of educational theory and practice in these areas—philosophy, literature and music within philosophy of education—of thus being “betwixt and between.” Two other themes comprising the article's subtext are “praxis” and “embodiment.” The double entendre of the phrase “working through” entails, first, using the arts of literature and music to practise philosophy of education; and secondly, embracing the psychological, ethical, and spiritual introspection that comes with critical engagement of the arts and its discourses. In short, the article aims to reprise some burning philosophical educational questions that have preoccupied its author over the years, questions deemed especially pertinent to the current increasingly diverse membership in the discipline of educational studies.     

Diffusion of innovations: Smartphones and wireless anatomy learning resources

The author has previously reported on principles of diffusion of innovations, the processes by which new technologies become popularly adopted, specifically in relation to anatomy and education. In presentations on adopting handheld computers [personal digital assistants (PDAs)] and personal media players for health sciences education, particular attention has been directed to the anticipated integration of PDA functions into popular cellular telephones. However, limited distribution of early “smartphones” (e.g., Palm Treo and Blackberry) has provided few potential users for anatomical learning resources. In contrast, iPod media players have been self‐adopted by millions of students, and “podcasting” has become a popular medium for distributing educational media content. The recently introduced Apple iPhone has combined smartphone and higher resolution media player capabilities. The author successfully tested the iPhone and the “work alike” iPod touch wireless media player with text‐based “flashcard” resources, existing PDF educational documents, 3D clinical imaging data, lecture “podcasts,” and clinical procedure video. These touch‐interfaced, mobile computing devices represent just the first of a new generation providing practical, scalable wireless Web access with enhanced multimedia capabilities. With widespread student self‐adoption of such new personal technology, educators can look forward to increasing portability of well‐designed, multiplatform “learn anywhere” resources. Anat Sci Ed 1:233–239, 2008. © 2008 American Association of Anatomists.     

Masculinity,subjectivity and neoliberalism in men’s accounts of migration and higher educational participation

In this article, I explore men’s educational experiences and aspirations in the context of UK policy discourses of widening participation and migration. Critiquing discourses that oversimplify gendered access to higher education, I develop an analysis of the impact of masculine subjectivities on processes of subjective construction in relation to be(com)ing a university student. Neoliberalism and self‐regulation emerge as significant themes by which the men make sense of their educational experiences and aspirations. Widening participation policy discursively constructs the subject as ‘disadvantaged’, ‘with potential’ and responsible for self‐improvement through participation in (alternative forms of) higher education (HE). The concept of diaspora illuminates the complex ways the men reconstruct their traumatic experiences in terms of hope and possibility, across different cultural spaces and expectations. A key question is how do the men construct and make sense of their masculine subjectivities in relation to diasporic experiences and aspirations to become HE students?     

Education's Love Triangle

It has been acknowledged that education includes ‘a love of what one teaches and a love of those whom one teaches’ (Hogan 2010: 81), but two traditions of writing in philosophy of education—concerning love for student and love for subject—have rarely been brought together. This paper considers the extent to which the ‘triangular’ relationship of teacher, student and subject matter runs the risk of the rivalry, jealousy and strife that are characteristic of ‘tragic’ love triangles, or entails undesirable consequences such as transference from one intended object of love to another. It argues that this faultline in the literature of educational love corresponds to education's ‘divided heart’. The implication of this exploration of education's triangular relationship is that we cannot ignore the ‘dark of love’, nor can we address it simply by asserting that educational love must be of a more honourable sort than romantic love. These tensions can be reconciled through the loving recourse of ‘ceasing to strive’ and the possibility of sublimating the two originary loves into a higher ‘love of truth’.     

Process,Orientation, and System: The Pedagogical Operation of Utopia in the Work of Paulo Freire

Recent years have witnessed a renewed interest in utopianism within educational theory. In this essay, Darren Webb explores the utopian pedagogy of Paulo Freire in the context of what one commentator has dubbed “the educational comeback of utopia.” Webb argues that Freire's significance lies in the way he embraced both “utopia as process” and “utopia as system.” This is significant because the contemporary rejuvenation of utopianism has extended only so far, embracing utopia conceived as an open‐ended process of becoming but shying away from utopia conceived as the delineation of a normative vision to be struggled for and won. Webb outlines the pedagogical operation of utopia as process, cognitive‐affective orientation, and system, and he argues that Freire was right in insisting that each is constitutive of effective educational practice.     

Quality in Teacher Education: a suppressed theme?

With the emergence of neo‐conservative and neo‐liberal ideologies since the early eighties the formula “quality” has superseded continuously the leitmotif “equality of educational opportunities” in debates on education in most member states of OECD—initially as reaction against reforms in the secondary sector of education, then in higher education by focusing on economic and administrative aspects. Although the term “quality” has remained rather vague, it has dominated debates on education since the early nineties and some observers even speak of a “quality movement”. With a certain delay, the same applies to teacher education (TE) and one may hold the impression that TE has been surprised by discussions on “quality in/of TE” which focus on economic and administrative aspects—aspects suppressed in most systems of TE in the member states of the European Union (EU) so far. This article analyses the complex background of debates on “quality in TE” by focusing on sociological perspectives and arguments of the educational sciences. Then it defines problem areas of TE which seem to be in need of improvement. Thirdly, it discusses measures to deal with perceived problems by taking into account experiences in various European countries discussed on occasion of an all‐European seminar of experts supported by the Commission of the European Union. In dynamic societies even preserving the existing “quality” of education systems and TE calls for permanent improvement. If it is intended to increase the “quality” of TE, improvements seem to be indispensable both permanently and of a substantial nature. Based on existing strength of TE and on continuous evaluation, improvements and reforms will be necessary both in its curricula (e.g. aims contents, methodologies) and in its organisational as well as administrative areas. Research in TE as well as competencies of teacher educators will have to play crucial roles. It might become possible to deal with a suppressed theme more pro‐actively.